Friday, November 28, 2014

“Rock and South Middleboro schools are self-contained teaching units whereby the teachers are with the pupils from the moment they arrive by busses until they depart in the afternoon. The teachers teach the pupils, supervise them on the playground, and eat with them. Their instruction transcends the academic. Such close contact affords many lessons in good citizenship and a proper sense of moral and social values. A warm word of praise goes to these teachers for this vital aspect of helping boys and girls to grow.” Edward W. Sawicki, principal, 1958.

Clara F. Robinson (1882 or prior -1883)

Cora P. Lobdell (1883-1884)

Charlotte Hezlitt (1884)

G. C. Humphrey (1884-85)

Carrie F. Sampson (1885)

Bertha I. Mason (1886)

Nellie F. Thomas (1886-87)

Luranna W. Thomas (1887-88)

Eleanor G. Shaw (1889)

Isa L. Deane (1889-90)

Helen G. Cutter (1890)

Mary E. Deane (1890-91)

Ada D. Anthony (1891-93)

Nellie T. Alden (1894-95)

Bessie B. Gibbs (1896)

Mary E. Deane (1897)

Bertha E. Vaughan (1897-98)

Veretta F. Shaw (1899-1902)

N. Louise Kimball (1902-1904)

Mrs. Marian Sisson (1905-06)
Her “removal” was very much regretted.

Donna F. Luce, Quincy, MA (1906)
Resigned

Miss Hattie M. Chace, Middleborough (1906-08)

Miss Joise L. Russell, Wareham (1908-09)

Miss Christina Pratt, Middleborough (September, 1909 –

Miss Clara Cushing

Miss Helen Prescott, Arlington

Margaretta A. Wallace (September, 1910 – August, 1912)
“For years the popular efficient teacher of the South Middleboro school.”

Miss Irene J. Hatch (1912-18)
She died in December, 1918. Previous to South Middleborough, she had taught at the Highland School in Middleborough. She “was interested in her school work and gave the best of her efforts to advance her pupils.”

Miss Frances L. Squarey (1918-20)
She was the teacher at the time of the Armistice. “Too much cannot be said in praise of the patriotic entertainment she trained the pupils to give, which was really something fine.”

Miss Eileen/Elena Manley, Plympton (1920-21)

Henry Bengt Burkland, Middleborough (1921-25)
Burkland is undoubtedly the best known of the South Middleborough teachers, thanks largely to his later role in the educational life of Middleborough. It is for Burkland for whom one of Middleborough’s elementary schools is named.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

The South Middleborough Protective Association is undertaking a grass roots effort to preserve the historic South Middleborough School. Please visit the SMPA's Facebook page to sign up in support of their efforts. Every signature is critical to demonstrate support for this worthy project!

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Middleborough has always been a conservative town. Its ban on public swearing in 2012 achieved fairly widespread notoriety, but was not the first action of its kind. One hundred years ago, in a similar act aimed at maintaining a semblance of decorum among its residents, Middleborough police were tasked with ensuring that the slits in women's skirts did not exceed what was considered proper - 15 inches to be exact. At the time, the action attracted the attention of Chicago's The Day Book which published the following notice on January 19, 1914.

How high may a slit skirt be slit?
"Fifteen inches!"
Such is the decree of those intelligent guardians of propriety, the police. Any longer breach in the skirt is considered a breach of the peace - at least in the puritanical minds of the good people of Middleboro, Mass.
Chief of Police [Harry] Swift of more-than-moral Middleboro has shown that fifteen inches is the very ultimate maximum of leg that can be decently shown. And so he has turned loose on the streets the "slit-skirt censors" - a detachment of patrolmen armed with two-foot rules instead of clubs.
But the rule is, in fact, unnecessary, for each censor has so delicate a sense of decency that he can tell at once, and infallibly, by the tingle of shame which passes over him that when he sees it, that a certain slit skirt is revealing a sixteenth of an inch more of limb than the first fifteen inches which alone can be gazed upon with perfect propriety.

It's not quite clear just how far the measure progressed or how long it lasted. The Boston Globe in February 1914 reported that the story had reached as far as the west coast where Chief Swift was the subject of at least one cartoon and news clipping.

ABOUT RECOLLECTING NEMASKET

Recollecting Nemasket is a web log about the history of Middleborough and Lakeville, Massachusetts. In addition to publishing local history articles, Recollecting Nemasket seeks to be an interactive educational resource for community history by providing links to historical information and sources, and by soliciting input from readers in the form of recollections, photographs and other images.

Please feel free to comment upon the articles, to record your recollections or to contact me with any stories or images you might wish to share with others.

If you wish to use images or text from this site, please include a link or credit to Recollecting Nemasket.

History Relevance Campaign

LOCATING NEMASKET

Middleborough and Lakeville are situated at the heart of southeastern Massachusetts as shown on H. F. Walling's 1871 map of the Commonwealth

Contact Me

Discover Middleborough Magazine

Recollecting Nemasket was honored to be able to contribute to the inaugural edition of Middleborough's new digital magazine which features hsitoric Titicut.

The Famous Trotting Ground: A History of Middleborough's Fall Brook Driving Park

Nemasket River Herring: A History

Representatives of the Great Cause

Star Mill: History & Architecture

South Middleborough: A History

New Pictorial History of Middleborough

Available from local and on-line booksellers.

Lakeville's King Philip Tavern

Lakeville's Native "Princesses"

Wootonekanuske and Teweeleema, more familiarly known as Charlotte and Melinda Mitchell, were the last descendants of Massasoit and lived at Betty's Neck in Lakeville.

New England Cranberry Sales Company

Formed in 1907 as the first cranberry growers' cooperative in Massachusetts, the New England Cranberry Sales Company was headquartered at Everett Square in Middleborough. In 1954, it merged with Ocean Spray.

Ebenezer W. Peirce, "History of Middleboro'" in D. Hamilton Hurd. History of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Philadelphia, PA: J. W. Lewis & Co., 1884.

Ebenezer W. Peirce, "History of Lakeville" in D. Hamilton Hurd. History of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Philadelphia, PA: J. W. Lewis & Co., 1884.

Gladys Vigers. History of the Town of Lakeville, Massachusetts. Lakeville, MA: Town of Lakeville, 1952.

Phyllis Elliott Draghetti and D. Evelyn Sylvia Norris. History of the Town of Lakeville: The Next Twenty-Five years 1953-1978. Lakeville, MA: Town of Lakeville, 1978.

William Hubbard. The History of the Indian Wars in New England from the First Settlement to the Termination of the War with King Philip, in 1677. Roxbury, MA: Samuel G. Drake, 1865. Volume 1. Volume 2.